Emanuel wants to prevent more signs like Trump's

June 13, 2014|By John Byrne and Bill Ruthhart | Tribune reporters

(Scott Stantis)

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Friday he has asked his staff to look at possible changes to the city’s regulations to ensure that another “tasteless” sign like the new one on the Trump Tower is never allowed again.

That’s just fine with Donald Trump, who insisted the sign spelling out his last name on his prominent Chicago River skyscraper already had become wildly popular.

“That’s something they can do, absolutely. But they can’t change the rules mid-game,” Trump said of the city considering new sign restrictions.

“If they want to do that for future buildings, that’s something I would fully understand,” Trump said in an interview with the Tribune. “That’s up to them. They certainly have the right.”

Emanuel did not answer questions about what action he could take to remove the sign, which was installed this week. Instead, the mayor chose to focus on preventing similar signs from appearing along Chicago’s riverfront.

“I want to make sure that on a future basis that we have the planning development and all the ordinances in a way that reflect the city’s beautiful architecture,” Emanuel said. “And if we have to tighten that up, I’ve asked my staff to look at it so a situation like this doesn’t emerge in the future.”

Emanuel also repeated his personal opinion, that the “tasteless” sign “scars the architecture, beauty and taste” of the Trump Tower.

“People from all over the world come and are just shocked by the beauty of our architecture, the beauty of our natural landscape in the sense of both the lake, the lakefront and the incredible river that runs through the city of Chicago and all our parks,” Emanuel said. “It’s been said we’re the city in the garden, and I want to preserve that.”

And for Trump, ever the competitor, such a change would leave his sign as one of the few on high-rises that line the Chicago River. The New York real estate mogul pointed out that he originally received approval in 2009 from former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration to erect a larger sign and then reached an agreement with the Emanuel administration, which wanted it reduced in size.

The original approval called for a 3,600-square-foot sign, while the current one is 2,891-square-feet, featuring 20-foot-tall letters.

“The building is almost 1,400 feet high. You’re talking about 20-foot letters. You can’t put two-foot letters up. It’d look ridiculous,” Trump said, emphasizing that the sign was designed and installed by Chicago firms. “The proportion of the letters to the building are perfect.”

Trump called in to the Today Show on Friday to defend his Chicago sign and once again express his displeasure with Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, whose criticism of the sign triggered a buzz on national TV and social media.

In the newspaper interview, Trump repeatedly bragged about how the brouhaha was trending on Twitter. That, he said, only had added to the sign’s cachet.

“The building is an architectural gem, but the signage enhances the building,” Trump said. “You will see that in the years to come, that sign will become iconic, if it’s not already iconic, because of all that’s taken place. It’s being talked about all over the world.”